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Essays

Collected Notes

Essays

A running collection of essays, notes, and reflections on Louisiana life, public service, civil-law tradition, books, family memory, and the duties worth preserving.

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Decency Is Not a Partisan Luxury

I have noticed something lately that I do not care for. More and more people on the political right have taken to calling Michelle Obama a man. Sometimes it is said as a joke. Sometimes it is said with the smug satisfaction of someone who believes he has discovered a clever insult. Sometimes it is posted as if it were a badge of tribal loyalty. I find it classless . That may not be the fashionable thing to say in certain circles, but it is the honest thing to say. There are many fair criticisms a person may make of the Obamas. They were public figures at the highest level of American life. Their politics, policies, speeches, influence, and their place in American culture are all proper subjects for disagreement. A citizen has every right to criticize those things plainly. But there is a difference between criticism and degradation. A serious man should know the difference. I think often of John McCain during the 2008 campaign, when a woman at one of his town halls tried to turn Bar...
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Dead Reckoning - First Book Teaser

Dead Reckoning , The Story of Théogène Chapman Part I :  Chapter 1   The boat that would carry Théogène Chapman across the Atlantic was beginning to rot in Louisiana mud when he found her. She sat sinking into the mud of a Morgan City boatyard, abandoned to the blistering humidity and the slow indignity of neglect. Hemmed in by creosote pilings and the smell of dead fish, her once-white hull had faded to the color of old bone. The mast still stood, though only by what appeared to be stubbornness and habit. Theo stopped walking. A minute earlier, he had been thinking about what he would eat for dinner. Now he was staring at a sailboat. “You interested?” The voice came from somewhere behind him. Theo turned and found an old man sitting beneath the shade of a cypress tree. He wore a stained straw hat and held a cane across his lap. “In that?” Theo asked. The old man glanced at the boat. “Depends.” “On what?” “Whether you’ve got imagination or not.” The sensible answer was no...
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Dead Reckoning - Second Book Teaser

Dead Reckoning , The Story of Théogène Chapman Part I :  Chapter 6   The kitchen was the heart of the house, a space that defied the bitter chill outside with a relentless, humid warmth. It was a sensory overload that began the moment Theo stepped through the threshold. The air was a heavy, intoxicating slurry of dark-roasted coffee, woodsmoke, and the deep, earthy base of a roux that had been stirred for hours until it reached the color of an old penny. He stepped out of the biting wind, and for a moment, the transition nearly blinded him. The living room was dominated by a tall, fragrant cedar tree brought in from the edge of the property. It wasn’t the manicured, store-bought pines of the city; it was wild, asymmetrical, and deeply green. It was decorated with strings of popcorn threaded by hand, dried orange slices that caught the firelight like stained glass, and fragile, hand-painted glass ornaments that had survived three generations of chaotic holidays. Beneath th...
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